SQLAuthority News – Resolutions of Year 2013 – Commitment to Myself

First of all, happy New Year to all of you – 2013 has started!

Every year I make at least one resolution, some I do for the public on my blog. The reason is simple – if I declare something in front of all of you, there is a good chance I will be held accountable to it. Without my readers, no one will check up on me and it will be easy to fall off the wagon. But this year I am making more than resolutions, I am making commitments to myself, and I want to follow them. In fact, I want to finish them in six months, not a whole year. A few of my 2013 commitments are professional, and some are for my personal life. I want to see how I progress over the year.

Write More Books

My first professional commitment: I want to write a few more books. The reason is simple, in 2011 I wrote three books, and they gave me tremendous satisfaction. Writing books is totally different from writing a blog. The blog is like a sprint, writing a book is a marathon– one you have to win. The blog is a different game – you only need to focus on it for one or two hours a day. A book takes a whole year. So in 2011 I wrote three books, and in 2012 I helped write few books as well. This will be hard to replicate in 2013, but I have some ideas. I want to rewrite a lot of books. I want to write huge book to help someone learn SQL Server from the beginning. I want to write a book that will hold their hand through the whole process. The kind of book that every single person who reads it feels they learned something. A quality book that changes people’s lives. I already have a head start on this book. I am only writing this resolution to make sure it gets out and that I am held accountable.

Go Beyond SQL

My second professional resolution: I want to learn more than SQL Server, and author a course for Pluralsight. SQL is my career – but technology is a bigger world. Everyone should learn something new – piano, guitar, skiing. I want to learn something new, too, and I want to learn more technology, and be able to do a course on it. To be able to teach a course, I need to have the confidence I learned it completely. If you can’t train someone, you didn’t learn properly.

Attend SQLskills Training

My third professional resolution: Attend professional SQL training – specifically the training course taught by SQLskills Team (Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp). This is more than a resolution, it is a dream that in 2013 I am able to attend that course. They have a course offered through Pluralsight, too, but want to go in person. It will be expensive to attend in the USA all the way from India, but sometimes it’s not about money. This is about making my dream come true; I want to make it happen. The courses I want to attend are Immersion Event 1 and Immersion Event 2.

Reduce my Weight

And finally, I have a personal resolution that I am posting here: I want to reduce my weight. I have been working on it for two years, but haven’t lost any weight, only gained (I am sure many can sympathize with this phenomenon). However, this year I want to commit. I will be going to the gym every day, and next year at this time I will report how much I lost. I started this resolution last month and lost 10 pounds, but I want to lose much more than that. Every month I will post about my weight loss, what I did and what I learned. Let’s see how far we go with that.

Looking forward to 2013

These are four commitments to myself. Every year I post these resolutions. One resolution that I followed through on from last year is that I was able to spend more time with my family. Luckily I was able to spend more time with them and am able to do more things. My family is happy with Pluralsight and how it allows me to set my own schedule. My colleagues are awesome, and both my family and I really appreciate it.

For 2013, let’s see how I do! Meanwhile, post your resolution here. Don’t do something simple – pick something challenging, which is the fun way to do it.

I have a tip for the weight loss that I am absolutely sure you will love to try. It is what I have done and it works quite well.

I am not massively over-weight but I am over. As many techies will understand, it is difficult to sit at a computer for as many hours a day as we do and excercise at the same time. Well, I got news. This is not always true….

I bought a cross trainer (Nordic Track E10) and a Samsung TV / Computer monitor. I mounted the monitor on the wall in front of my cross trainer in my garage. Using the monitors HDMI connector with an MDL cable connected to my Samsung Galaxy S3 smart phone I can watch You Tube on the TV. You could also do this with a laptop computer, tablet or use a SMART TV instead.

Now, after work, when I excercise, I either watch a film for a long workout or I switch on you tube on some of my subcribed techie channels and watch educational videos on how to do stuff. There are loads of good channels on You tube related to SQL Server.

Hopefully this idea inspires you and maybe you might also consider a you tube Channel of your own to share your knowledge.

Some videos do not work well due to the concentration levels or screen detail / interaction required but its better than sitting at the computer muching biscuits eh?

I hope this tip helps you and others and I look forward to reading more of your fantastic blog post in the coming year.

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About Pinal Dave

Pinal Dave is a Pluralsight Developer Evangelist. He has authored 11 SQL Server database books, 17 Pluralsight courses and have written over 3200 articles on the database technology on his blog at a http://blog.sqlauthority.com. Along with 11+ years of hands on experience he holds a Masters of Science degree and a number of certifications, including MCTS, MCDBA and MCAD (.NET). His past work experiences include Technology Evangelist at Microsoft and Sr. Consultant at SolidQ. Follow @pinaldave
Send Author Pinal Dave
an email at pinal@sqlauthority.com

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